We had a nice, fast, broad reach across Georgian Bay to the Main Channel. The extra speed helped us pass through the tricky bits there mid-afternoon, rather than after sunset. That left us each with easy night watches where all we had to do was steer down the empty middle of the big lake.
Our last sail of the year - not too bad at all
The same was not true the next night. After a hurried dinner and quick sail change, we entered the St. Clair River just in time for Maryanne to take over. With the darkness, the narrow channels, and occasionally having to slide out of the way of heavy shipping traffic, the only time she was able to leave the helm was for a quick step onto the adjacent deck for a better vantage point. I had the same on my night watch for the last bit of the river and the crossing of Lake St. Clair.
At the other side, just past sunrise, we were happy to pull in behind Peche Island, at the northern end of the Detroit River and call an early end to the day. We then had a rainy day-and-a-half to rest and start preparing for our impending haulout.
We anchored for a few nights to prep the boat for haul out
When the rain stopped, we motored the partially disassembled Begonia to last few miles to her new winter home in La Salle, Ontario. As we tied up, we couldn't help but notice a slight look of concern and confusion on the faces of the guys who took our lines as to what we were doing there. When we explained that we were hauling out the next day, that only seemed to partly appease them.
A few minutes later, they returned armed with tape measures, took some measurements, and left. When we went to the office to pick up our accumulated parcels, we were told the guys had remeasured both Begonia and their lift and that there was no way Begonia was going to fit. Of course the measurements were exactly the same as we'd already given months before, but this time they measured the lift too, and therein lay the problem.
Kim, the office manager, came by the boat later. She was very apologetic about the mix-up and had spent a huge amount of time to work out a couple of options for us. The first was to hire a local crane company to haul us out. This was 'only' going to cost us about an extra thousand dollars each way. That option had the appeal of still being at the same marina, where all of our boat parts were already being sent. Plus, we had already booked a car and accommodation in nearby Windsor.
Looking around the marina, there didn't seem to be any location to lift Begonia that was very close to a place that would support a big crane. The longer distance would mean we would need an even bigger crane, which would require a bigger pad, etc.
We eventually decided to go with the even more expensive second option, which was to go to a commercial yard that builds and services Coast Guard boats, ice breakers, and the like. They had a huge lift. We were told it was five hours away, but after plotting the route, it looked like it would be more like ten. As we were busy diverting our shipping and redoing our accomodation reservations, the manager of the commercial yard called us and told us (heavily suggested) that a better option for us would be the marina in Erieau, only seven hours farther along the shore. In order to make it there by the next day's sunset, I would have to leave at one a.m. while Maryanne killed time driving the much faster rental car to me.
While I sailed, Maryanne did trips to stores all over, loading the car with all we'd need for the haul-out, but also squeezed in a visit to Point Pelee National Park, knowing too well that this might be her last chance in a while to appreciate a break from the full time boatyard work
The boat relocation trip actually went better than I thought it would. The forecast was for flat calm conditions, which should have made for a long, slow session of motoring, but I managed to get just enough crosswind to be able to put up the sails and enjoy some quiet time while going faster the motor would have managed.
I got to Erieau ahead of my original estimate. Maryanne had timed all of her errand-running based on that, so when she finally arrived to take my lines, I had already been tied up for ten minutes or so.
In the morning, Dave, the marina owner, stopped by to have a look at Begonia and to tell us the plan. It was encouraging that he didn't seem concerned about whether or not we would fit in the lift. The main issue, was that "We are really a storage facility, not a boatyard".
There was no power, no ladders, no stairs, and if we needed water for cleaning anything, we had better fill our tanks, because that's where we were going to get it.
This was definately not going to be like our previous two haulouts (both at The Boat Works, which is one of the world's most comprehensive refit yards). This was going to be more like being left in a gravel parking lot in the middle of nowhere. Of course by now we were grateful for anywhere that would take us at such short notice, we'd just have to work it out.
This last one was particularly problematic because we had been dwindling our supplies in preparation for winterizing the water system. In fact, we had run out just after filling the kettle with water for morning coffee. I thought it would be a simple, if time-consuming, task to fill our tanks from the hose at the adjacent fuel dock.
This was not the case. Due to Erieau's proximity to Mars, water is a scarce and closely-guarded commodity. Talking to the fuel kiosk attendant, he told me the water for the dock was off and that he had neither the knowledge nor the authority to turn it on. He suggested I try the fish cleaning station at the boat ramp. That was well out of hose range, so I would have to jug it to the boat. One look at the fish-gut-coated nozzles there had me going further along to the next finger of docks. There, I discovered the taps are all at toe level, and thus useless for filling a jug. Halfway along, I finally found a clean enough looking hose attached to one of them to fill the jug, but then now I had to walk an eighth of a mile back to the boat. I was not about to do that fifteen or twenty more times to fill the tanks. Late the next afternoon, after much running around to find Dave and then the guy with the right keys, we were finally told the water at the fuel dock would be turned on for us, but that it was going off promptly at closing.
The guy at the fuel dock was perfectly polite about it, but by the time the last of our tanks were full with just three minutes to go, he had clearly finished up all of his other duties for the day and was running out of ways to look busy while he waited for me.
First thing the next morning, Dave came by to say he was ready for us with the Travelift (the machine that lifts the boat from the water and can then drive it to any nearby patch of yard to set it down again). We were fortunate that there was not a breath of wind, which made it easy for me to maneuver Begonia into the exact middle of the lift with six inches to spare on each side.
It was then that we discovered a couple of problems with the Travelift. The first was that Dave had it set for the larger boats that he had previously hauled and expected to haul after he was done with Begonia. Instead of the usual two straps, the lift was set up with two pairs of straps. The front pair weren't a problem, but the back two were too far apart to fit between Begonia's keels and saildrives. Removing one of the straps put the forward two in the wrong place, so one of them had to be removed. The second problem was that this particular Travelift was one of the versions that doesn't readily allow for fore and aft adjustments to the vessel position as a whole. The straps could be moved closer together or farther apart, but not in the same direction. This, combined with the fact that Begonia's lifting points are both pretty far back meant that as she was lifted, clearance between our forestay and the Travelift's forward beam became an issue. Dave asked if we could drop the forestay so it wouldn't hit.
"Sure, but the mast will fall down, so we probably shouldn't." I was worried he was going to tell us we had no choice but to unstep the mast for the second time in a year, but he just kept working the problem instead.
We couldn't lift Begonia high enough to remove the rudders in the usual way, so we had to go down to the water and remove them while the stern was hanging off the edge of the pad. Then Dave was able to lift her just high enough to keep her keels off the ground. Success!
Despite all that he had told us about not being able provide to boatyard-style facilities for us, Dave rearranged his storage plan so that he could get us close enough to the dry storage building to be able to access both water and power from it during business hours. We were also much, much closer to the toilets and showers. Our only problem was that we were going to have to dump all the water we just loaded. Still that was a much better problem to have than being way out in the sticks, where we could only get it by filling buckets from our galley faucet.
Location >> On google maps
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